Quick breads are leavened with baking powder: acid + alkali bubbles immediately. In the old days, that was a very sour liquid yeast culture and probably some very fine potash used for baking soda.

Ancient Egyptian practice was to leave a little dough in the bottom of the kneading trough with a sprinkling of water to let it ferment and dry out to preserve the yeast for next time.

The Hebrew slaves complained bitterly about the sourdough culture, flies and even frogs from the river getting into the kneading troughs, and all sorts of other plagues. The human culture was sick, too, with all the slavery, bondage, BDSM, ritualistic male genital mutilation, and all manner of other forms of morbidity and affliction.

Moses instructed them to bake unleavened bread in preparation for their departure from that foreign and worldly land of disease, affliction, and bondage, onward to a promised homeland flowing with milk and honey.

Wheat, (including varieties such as spelt etc.,) is essentially the only grain, which, when milled into flour, moistened, and kneaded, supports the leavening action of yeast. Barley malts, oats become sticky and heavy, rye becomes sour and sticky, and maize corn simply does not leaven at all.

Sounleavened bread,if one must specify, is essentially awheat tortilla.Any thicker than a tortilla, and it would be an inedible brick if baked without leavening. Any grain other than wheat, and it would not generally be necessary to specify unleavened.

The Swedes refer to the unleavened bread of the Bible very formally assötebröd,(or "sweet" bread as opposed to "sourdough" bread,) but this is somewhat inaccurate because Swedes traditionally bake a lot of sweet breads that are not at all unleavened. Some of those old Swedes were "sourdoughs" and they found a way to sneak that old leaven back into the Bible, and my own mother.

Oh, I forgot. Those sourdoughs are "dyed in the wool" and they burn firewood at 100 faggots to the cord to stay warm all winter. Blue stockings and hair dye in the shampoo like 100 years ago.

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And when I read in the Holy Bible of the nine plagues of Egypt, I have the distinct impression that none of that sickness and disease was new, but all of it had already been taking place for 400 years, and Moses had to "serve" Pharaoh and his magicians at law of their illness and morbidity and of the filthiness of their horrible institutions of bondage and slavery.

For nothing short of the hideous terrors of three days and three nights of total darkness, the death of their firstborn by the visit of the destroying angel, and the drowning of the pursuing party in the Red Sea, could serve to throw the Egyptian taskmasters off the backs of the Hebrew slaves.

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The cause of Egypt's plague of darkness was the eruption of Mt. Sinai. Volcanic ash filled the air and blotted out the sun completely, and the Egyptians called in vain upon their sun God Rah from the sudden and total cavelike darkness.

The firstborn developed respiratory distress and died of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) after breathing in that fine volcanic ash with their first lungsful of air outside the womb.

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is said to be the longest word in the English language, and it is not a joke.

When Moses stretched forth his staff over the Red Sea, it is written, "the things, that before swam in the water, now went upon the ground. The fire had power in the water, forgetting his own virtue: and the water forgat his own quenching nature. On the other side, the flames wasted not the flesh of the corruptible living things, though they walked therein."

Flowing lava had welled up to part the waters, so suddenly that fish were seen leaping on dry ground, and the people walked across safely with dry shoes on hot coals of lava, which, when it receded, allowed the waters to return and drown their enemies.

The pillar of fire visible by night, the "mushroom cloud" or pillar of cloud by day, and the rumbling and shaking as Mt. Sinai continued to erupt are all clearly described in the Bible.

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I broke up two poetic pairings in the above text. To quote more fully, from the Wisdom of Solomon, 19th chapter,

19 For earthy things were turned into watery, and the things, that before swam in the water, now went upon the ground.

"Earthy things turned into watery" is a description of molten rock and ash, or flowing lava.

20 The fire had power in the water, forgetting his own virtue: and the water forgat his own quenching nature.

Another poetic pairing of fire and water with the Egyptian meme of forgetfulness.

21 On the other side, the flames wasted not the flesh of the corruptible living things, though they walked therein; neither melted they the icy kind of heavenly meat that was of nature apt to melt.

A strange and colorful figure of speech to say that the heat of the lava harmed neither male nor female flesh. "Darn! Their corruptible male arses and frigid female arses all made it across safely!" And to speak of runaway Hebrew slaves as "things" while at the same time sexing them so graphically and yet subtly.

22 For in all things, O Lord, thou didst magnify thy people, and glorify them, neither didst thou lightly regard them: but didst assist them in every time and place.

The recorder of this last verse, no doubt from the Jewish diaspora among the Greeks, turns to the Lord and excuses his mirth at quoting such Egyptian vulgarity.

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Probably low ground cover, with red hot lava appearing through the subsoil. Holy ground? I should think so. Moses was not a fool. He was terrified out of his mind, and carefully took off his shoes to feel of the unspeakable heat with his bare feet.

Moses worshipped one God and Creator of all, who called himselfYahweh("I am that I am") orYah("I am") for short.

When Moses appeared in Pharaoh's court in the name ofYah,Pharaoh was able to save face by allowing that Moses, in invokingYah,was not worshipping a foreign God but only mispronouncing the name ofRahbecause of his speech impediment.

Pharaoh's magicians, Jannes and Jambres, were acquitted at trial on the first two plagues of changing the waters of the River Nile into deadly poisonous blood, and causing a sudden gathering of frogs in such great masses to mate out of season.

The magicians were convicted at trial on the plague of lice, and pleaded no contest to the plague of flies and murrain of cattle. For their silence they were required to make restitution of cattle for cattle, living for dead, until the court was satisfied that not one of the cattle of the children of Israel had died of the murrain, that peculiar form of mortality at law which affects cattle.

Pharaoh's lawyers, Jannes and Jambres, called in sick and failed to appear in court for the plague of smallpox, which allowed Moses to omit the service of process for the hail of pumice stone and rain of fire which fell from Mt. Sinai, the plague of grasshoppers that devoured what was left of Egypt's crops, the darkness that fell when the sun was blotted out by soot and ashes from Mt. Sinai, and the respiratory distress and death of the newborn children who were only accounted firstborn until the midwives and Pharaoh's witnesses in law attended to another birth.